I am building my personal home in Portland Oregon and as with most people, money does matter, I will be building certainly beyond code and will be doing somethings with minimal payback just to have a high efficiency home.
Plans are so far Waterfurnace 3 ton 7 Series ground source heat pump with 2 zones
WaterFurnace NSW018 geothermal water heating system.
Lifebreath 155 CFM ECM HRV system.
Planning on 3-4KW solar panels for home
Damp cellulose insulation in 6" wall cavities R49 in ceilings.
Radiant floor for basement 4th bedroom and theater room and probably garage(not show in stock plans)
Daikin multi split heat pump for cooling in theater room, 4th bedroom and garage
Windows to be .25U-Value
House will be facing North and has a heat loss of 27K BTU at 24 degree outdoor design temperature if built purely to code.

My question is, what else should I be doing that should provide a payback or a major benefit in performance, comfort or air quality, or how would you build your own house?
Floor plans can be found here, but as you can see from picture bedroom can be added but is not shown on stock plan set.
http://houseplans.co/house-plans/2263dc

Shouldn't it face South?

If the front is facing north, then the back is facing south, which is ideal in my opinion since you can put the bulk of your windows on the back where you typically will have more privacy.

I assume that the walls will also have taped rigid foam to reduce thermal bridging. I'd also add an interior side air barrier (also taped) and then blower door testing.

then the back is facing south,

Problem with that is the owner resistance encountered in minimalizing the North windows. Because it is the "front" of the house, at least one of the marital partners usually wants to keep them larger (as designed) to retain the look.

The result is either very expensive, as you start buying unnecessary thermal upgrades on large North windows or a significant hit in the delicate balance between N/S glazing.

House can not be flipped, front is North and thats the only way it can fit on the lot and both myself and fiancee like the big(inefficient) windows on the front.
Also with my lot the south of the house will have mostly shade due to the home on the hill behind me, however from my calculations the house behind me will not block the sun on my roof at anytime during the year so I can at least still do solar.

I'm shooting from the hip a bit here, but you asked what we'd do if the home were to be ours:

The plan shows square footage almost 2700. Mine is around 3700 if I don't include walls and stairwell. Your heat loss is 27K BTU/hr at a fairly mild 24 degrees F outside, mine is, by model, only 22K BTU/hr at -3 F design outside temp (central NH), but indications from the last two winters are the actual loss is somewhat lower. Your planned heat pump is a 3-ton, vs my 2-ton (which never has to go to second stage even in winter). If you built your house to be anywhere close to superinsulated, you could cut that 27K BTU/hr in half, or nearly so.

You would incur a cost to go either double wall (not all that much, it's just the outside walls) or a substantial layer of exterior foam, and perhaps more by bumping sub-slab insulation to 4". You would save some money by shrinking that heat pump to a two-ton, which still would be way over what's needed to do the job. You can save some money by skipping the radiant floor heating. A very well insulated house loses heat very slowly, so the circulating water temp would have to be so low that the floor wouldn't feel warm underfoot anyway, or it would overheat the space above it. The slab won't feel cold, though, as it will be essentially at room temperature. Carpet it, or keep the slippers on. My lower level is low-pile carpet over slab over 4" foam, and it just doesn't feel cold on the feet.

Over on greenbuildingadvisor.com there is a recent blog about a 2,000 sqft house design, for which the estimated cost bump for going very well insulated (and not quite superinsulated), and for which the modeled saving in heating cost vs code minimum in Rhode Island was $1500/yr. I posted a comment that if the house is financed over 20 or 30 years, it would cost less to own (principal, interest, taxes, energy) from day one by paying the extra $8K and going the route of the design vs code minimum. Of course the house would be more comfortable to live in, too.

Yeah the model of 27K BTU's is based on code minimum and no air sealing so an average tightness. I have to go with a 3 ton because WaterFurnace currently does not make a 2 ton variable capacity heat pump. Since it is a variable capacity heat pump when operating at low stages of operationg(as low as 22% of capacity) it can hit into the 6 COP range and at 50% capacity hits a 5.3 COP and 41 EER. I think that the model is also way high and as you said your home looses less heat than modeled I would assume mine will do the same once built because the Manual J does oversize just a bit with a fudge factor.

Posted By DickRussell on 22 Apr 2013 12:15 PM
I'm shooting from the hip a bit here, but you asked what we'd do if the home were to be ours:

The plan shows square footage almost 2700. Mine is around 3700 if I don't include walls and stairwell. Your heat loss is 27K BTU/hr at a fairly mild 24 degrees F outside, mine is, by model, only 22K BTU/hr at -3 F design outside temp (central NH), but indications from the last two winters are the actual loss is somewhat lower. Your planned heat pump is a 3-ton, vs my 2-ton (which never has to go to second stage even in winter). If you built your house to be anywhere close to superinsulated, you could cut that 27K BTU/hr in half, or nearly so.

You would incur a cost to go either double wall (not all that much, it's just the outside walls) or a substantial layer of exterior foam, and perhaps more by bumping sub-slab insulation to 4". You would save some money by shrinking that heat pump to a two-ton, which still would be way over what's needed to do the job. You can save some money by skipping the radiant floor heating. A very well insulated house loses heat very slowly, so the circulating water temp would have to be so low that the floor wouldn't feel warm underfoot anyway, or it would overheat the space above it. The slab won't feel cold, though, as it will be essentially at room temperature. Carpet it, or keep the slippers on. My lower level is low-pile carpet over slab over 4" foam, and it just doesn't feel cold on the feet.

Over on greenbuildingadvisor.com there is a recent blog about a 2,000 sqft house design, for which the estimated cost bump for going very well insulated (and not quite superinsulated), and for which the modeled saving in heating cost vs code minimum in Rhode Island was $1500/yr. I posted a comment that if the house is financed over 20 or 30 years, it would cost less to own (principal, interest, taxes, energy) from day one by paying the extra $8K and going the route of the design vs code minimum. Of course the house would be more comfortable to live in, too.

Great minds think alike!  (I LOVED that li'l RI house!)

If you trade in the cost of the GSHP for higher performance windows & walls you could probably get the peak loads well under 20KBTU/hr and start thinking about which rooms don't REALLY need to be heated directly. There are multiple examples of homes that size in southern New England heated with 2 heads of ductless (though you may want to use the ducted mini-split heads to manage the doored-off bedrooms). My own 2400' house + 1500' of insulated basement with 2x4 construction for the above grade stuff comes in about 20K at Portland OR's 99% design temp. I have a lot less glass, but much of it's ~U0.5, not U0.25.  This is really do-able if you're willing to tweak the envelope design.

Very low-load homes get very little in the way of extra comfort out of radiant floors, since they're only warm enough to matter on design-day. Putting the radiant money into higher performance walls & windows works too.  The heating season is also much shorter.  With an R40 whole-wall the balance point on many homes is usually ~50F or even a bit less (way less in a house full of teenagers with a ton of plug-load), which in a Portland OR climate would mean that your heating season starts in late November and ends in late February or early March. (Shoulder season temps can be managed by opening windows.)  If you can only FEEL that radiant heat a handful of mornings per year, is it really worth it? Maybe so, maybe not...

An air-tight 2x6 24" o.c. wall with cellulose or open cell foam comes in at about R14 whole-wall. Add 3" of exterior polyiso and you're over R30, which is probably enough to get to Net Zero in Portland OR climate with a PV array that fits on top of the house if you went with U0.20 glass and an R50 attic/roof.  You might be able to get there with only 2" of foam with a mindful consideration and actually designing the passive solar aspects.

There is some nice constructability/simplicity aspects to using ICF for insulating the foundations and aligning the sheathing-foam with the ICF foam for a perfect thermal break, but that's sometimes a more expensive way to go, sometimes not. It's usually quicker from a "time is money" perspective, but not the cheapest way to hit a particular R value.  But it also makes for a perfect thermal break at the slab/footing too, since the slab-foam can run right up to the ICF foam, floating the slab.

If I understood correctly, you are planning on 3 heating systems. I'd simplify down to 1 or 2.

Yeah I understand the three heating systems sounds redundant upon redundant. The reason for three systems is this.
I own SkyHeating a lot of customers want to see a WaterFurnace 7 Series in action so I will have one in my home since we have no showroom. I want the ductless so I can cool and heat the garage and once again so I show potential customers since we get a lot of people asking how quiet they are. Plus we can't install ducts into a garage so the only way to cool it is to use a ductless system/second system.
The radiant floor... Well I can't afford the whole house since I don't do the labor so even though I am paying my own employees its still spendy for the whole home so I figured why not add it to the slab since I already ned the concrete and I will have leftover capacity from my geothermal water heating system. The radiant will only take an extra pump, few valves and thermostats and piping so cost on that is not much of an issue.

So to answer the question do I need it all no, not at all, but since I get my WaterFurnace equipment at a huge discount since it will be used as a display and personal use equipment why not go wild with it!
I'm just trying to figure out the best way to get the heat load down since my speciality is not in insulation or the building envelope or windows or air sealing.

As a sales tool, I'd spend some money on installing a Web Energy Logger (WEL). Set it up so you can actually measure COP and solar panel performance.

Posted By jonr on 24 Apr 2013 07:50 AM
As a sales tool, I'd spend some money on installing a Web Energy Logger (WEL). Set it up so you can actually measure COP and solar panel performance.

Yes I am definitely going to be putting on a WEL. We currently only have one up and running and the customer set it up so I have no control over any of the parameters http://www.welserver.com/WEL0626 but on this one the COP is not reading properly since it measures COP based on EWT - LWT loop temps but because the sensors are on the pipe and not in the water it takes a few minutes for them to acclimate and its not as accurate as I would like to see because I have a feeling that system is running in the 4 range with the EWT's that we see. The customer also has the wrong electric rates off by about 18% so it shows its running much more costly than it really is.
If I put on a WEL I think it will be the first variable capacity geothermal system on a WEL, but maybe somebody will beat me to it by the time my house HVAC is up and running.